everything i touch falls to pieces
by deke-core
Summary: Very very short one shot. About Kurt, pondering the way his image inducer makes him feel and indentify with his seperate human and demon appearances. A birthday fic for Snitter!


Everything I touch falls to pieces  
  
Okay, you win. You knew this was coming, so there you go. You forced me to do the thing that I knew I couldn't do. You forced me to do the thing you knew I didn't think I could do. But you won. So smile at your present. Because even in the darkest hours, victory is born. :)   
  
This is the first Kurt fic that I've ever done and my sister Snitter forced me to do it. Not really, but this is really short because I wrote it sooooo late at night.  
  
P.S. I love the title, wouldn't you agree? Title of the DeadtoFall album, but it's so great.

**everything i touch falls to pieces....**  
  
Mutations are the means to continue onwards.   
  
He had to keep reminding himself of that, despite the fact that nothing about him appeared to be human. It was close enough to midnight to assume that it was much later, and unlike the other students at Xavier's Institute, Kurt Wagner usually had a fairly accurate way to tell time deep in the night with a much stronger ability to be unable to sleep.  
  
He curled up under the blankets, and nothing from his room could be seen through the sheets except for a dim red glow that came from a bedside alarm clock. He had a wonderful knack for sleeping through his alarms regardless of how loud he made them, because staying up all night was his speciality.  
  
His breath came short while he remained hidden beneath the covers. He might as well have believe that it was a tent or that the simple covers would protect him from everything beyond them.  
  
He coiled up into a ball, his spade-like tail rested right against his cheek. The fur on it grew much more dense the closer it got to the tip, until fur altogether vanished and effortlessly glided into blue skin, but right now most of the fur was standing on end. It's like he was a cat whose owner invited over too many strangers. He felt too frightened to leave his tent.   
  
Restlessly, he let his three fingered hands escape from their harbor snug under his chest to grip onto his tail. His hands were lacking in fur only on the palms and fingertips, which was also the only place normal humans lacked any vellous hair. The contact of furless skin against furless skin (his palms touching the spade tail) was his only way to know how humans felt their own body.  
  
Slowly, Kurt let go of his tail again.  
  
It quivered for a bitter moment, like how a person would flick out their fingers after touching something that didn't settle with their nerves. He was being stupid. No one else had nightmares and then spent the waking hours trying to imagine how it would feel like to be like everyone else.  
  
Professor Xavier tried to teach them all that they should not look at the mutant/human issue as a focus on differences, but on a realization of similarities. Kurt wished he could look at it the same way.  
  
The first time that he arrived at the Institute, Kurt had been happy to be given his imagine inducer. Simply to look at himself in the mirror and see a pale, naked face staring back had lifted years worth of accumulating weight off his shoulders.  
  
Suddenly, the fact that he had been chased and harrassed by villagers no longer matter. In a single instant, the beatings he'd received from complete strangers who were frightened out of their wits was like a story he'd heard a long time ago. Looking into a human face had almost erased every time he had ever been chased or dogged or threatened or hurt. Staring into the mirror almsot made him forget the blue fur underneath the image.  
  
But curled up under his tentlike blankets, he was still a demon.  
  
He was still a demon, blue fur and all. Despite imagry, he still had a spade for a tail. Despite the Professor's wonderful gift, he still had yellow eyes and pointed ears.   
  
And despite the fleeting moment when he had smiled in the mirror, believing, or perhaps hoping too hard that every dream he had ever dreamt suddenly had came true, there was still a demon curled up underneath the cover remembering the truth.  
  
No image could erase what lies beneath it.  
  
Kurt sat up slowly, the blankets crumpling noiselessly around him. The air beyond his tent was so cool that he shivered, but thoughts on temperature discomforts were driven from his mind. He looked around his room - and his eyes fell on his image inducer.  
  
Yes, it was true. Most of the time he had these reoccuring nightmares, these unwelcomed sudden reminders of how much he longed for a way to forget his past, he would sooth it away with that little trick. If he fell asleep thinking he was a human, and if he fell asleep looking like a human, he was granted with a peaceful slumber.  
  
But tonight, there was something new going on in the demon's mind.  
  
He lept. He jumped away from his bed and landed on all fours on the floor beside his door. The carpet's texture flatened under his hands, but Kurt barely noticed. His tail whipped back and forth for a few moments as he stood tense and hesitant, though without a trace of anxiouty in his being.   
  
Kurt was being more adventurous than troubled, one paw-like hand raising slightly as a dog would have done when it encountered something which made it excited. Kurt's tail gave one more swish and then, he took another leap. His feet gripped the walls, and he stood on the wall by the dresser and mirror opposite of his bed.   
  
No one knew how that would feel, but the gripping sensation in his fingertips and palms (of both his hands and feet) was almost like a tickle. It felt like his skin was becoming a part of the wall, like there were tiny little scales on his fingertips that could go past simple contact.  
  
He leapt again, this time he jumped clear up to the ceiling. He hung upside down for a while, allowing the pull of gravity ripple pleasantly through his arms and legs. His pajamas hung loosely off his back as he stared up at the floor below him, and then he let go, spinning around to land on all fours on his bed.   
  
The next minute, he curled up under the covers as though he were a five year old who had been jumping on his bed and suddenly heard his parents charging towards the room, woken by the sound. There was a manic grin on his face as he cuddled further under the blankets.  
  
No, tonight, for the first time in a countless age, he was going to go to sleep as he was. He was going to close his eyes relishing his abilities and finding worth in how he looked. Kurt spent years loathing his appearance, but perhaps the Professor had been right all along. Perhaps he was onto something when he said that mutant powers were the way onwards. Maybe evolution really was the way to better things, but not all evolution was able to be seen with the eye alone.  
  
Kurt wrapped his tail snuggly around his balled-up body, his fur ruffling so much in satisfaction that he only appeared be a puff of blue, cuddled up in a surrounding of blankets and bedsheets that was no longer a tent.  
  
Tonight, he'd call it a den.


End file.
